The Omega Point and the
Final Fate of Life

How long can life survive in the universe? Can it evolve forever, or
will the third law of Thermodynamics lead to universal heat death? Apparently
there might be some ways around this fate, if intelligent life is sufficiently
clever and tenacious.

Essentially life has to adapt as the universe grows older, changing itself
to be able to survive when the stars grow cold. If the universe is open,
there will be plenty of time to work in, but energy will become very scarce.
Dyson has shown that a finite amount of energy is enough to guarantee
infinite survival if it is spent sufficiently slowly (this is called the
Dyson scenario).

On the other hand, if the universe is closed, it will recollapse into
a Big Crunch after a finite time, becoming hotter and hotter. Life has
to adapt and restructure itself to these conditions, and if intelligent
beings accelerate the speed of their mental processes accordingly they
can even experience a subjective infinite time during the last stages
of the collapse (this is called the Tipler
scenario).

A third possibility is that the universe may be open or closed, but new
baby universes branch off
due to natural or artificial causes, and intelligent life can survive
indefinitely by migrating into new domains as the old become uninhabitable.
This is commonly called the Linde
scenario.

As Freeman Dyson has shown, intelligent life can if it is patient and
smart enough, manipulate matter and energy on a cosmic scale, changing
the evolution of the universe and maybe even its fate. According to some
theories, intelligence even plays a cruicial role in the evolution of
universes.

Frank J. Tipler has proposed that it is possible for intelligent beings
to process and store an infinite amount of information in the universe,
if certain conditions are fulfilled. His definition of the Omega
Point is essentially a future
c-boundary which is a single point and an Aleph
state, where

Information processing continues indefinitely along at least one world-line
gamma all the way to the future c-boundary of the universe. i.e. Life
never dies out.

The amount of information processed between now and the future c-boundary
is infinite in the region of space-time with which the worldline gamma
can communicate. i.e. There will be an infinite number of thoughts,
experiences and events.

The amount of information stored at any given time tau within this region
diverges to infinity as tau approaches its future limit. i.e. More
and more is learned, and things never repeat themselves.

What has made his theory controversial is his claims that it is experimentally
verifiable, that the beings near the Omega Point will resurrect anybody
who has ever lived into a state close to classical descriptions of Paradise
and that the Omega Point itself corresponds to the religious notation
of God.

From a transhumanist perspective, the Omega Point is the logical conclusion
of our striving towards higer levels, regardless of its nature. It is
more of an engineering problem than a philosophical question.